Artsy CEOs inspire new breed of talent

Chief executives with non-business qualifications in areas such as fine arts, anthropology and psychology might be the exception to the rule, but they are blazing a trail for the next generation of leaders climbing the corporate ladder.

A survey of the educational qualifications of leading Australian listed companies by The Australian Financial Review found a small posse of chief executives with non-traditional qualifications: that is, they had not specialised in areas such as engineering, science, or economics.

Nor, as a rule, did they have business qualifications such as a master of business administration (MBA) which many other CEOs had undertaken following more specialised studies.

Telstra’s
David Thodey
has a bachelor of arts in anthropology and English from Victoria University in New Zealand,
Nick Curtis
at rare earth outfit Lynas majored in fine arts, Tatts chief executive
Dick McIlwain
is a bachelor of arts graduate from the University of Queensland and Myer boss
Bernie Brookes
holds a bachelor of arts and a diploma of education.

Westpac chief
Gail Kelly
also comes from an arts background. She graduated with a bachelor of arts in history and Latin and a diploma of education before going on to study for an MBA.

The interim president of the Australian Business Deans Council and dean of business at the University of Technology Sydney, Roy Green, said qualifications in the arts taught skills beneficial to business leaders and increasingly in demand.

“I guess the conclusion must be that those qualifications didn’t give them a strong grounding in the operational detail of the organisation they ultimately joined but in other capabilities, including how to think and how to be creative, and how to communicate, and they’re all the things that organisations are now looking for in their graduate recruitment," he said.

Professor Green said there was a shortage of business credentials among CEOs in Australia. This was emulated among the next generation of up and coming leaders, indicating that companies were increasingly looking for a broader balance of interdisciplinary knowledge.

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A recent round-table discussion between business deans and executive managers at
Commonwealth Bank
revealed that most of the participants from the bank didn’t have business degrees, Professor Green said. They held degrees in disciplines such as politics, history, psychology, and literature.

“These international companies know what they are looking for: they are looking for boundary-crossing skills, as well as the technical specialisation," Professor Green said.

“As the CBA said: ‘we’re recruiting not for the job but for the next MD’. After five years, if you’ve recruited someone for a job, diminishing returns set in, but if you’re recruiting them to be MD that’s just at the point that they begin to take off and that’s why a lot of the larger organisations, in particular, are now looking at a broader skills base."